


Babysitting

by DarkShadeless



Series: Of pint-sized terrors [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: The Old Republic (Video Game)
Genre: Arcann's self-esteem issues, Force-sensitive kid having a tantrum, M/M, and a few others - Freeform, being in over your head while trying to take care of a child, but all is soft in the end, he does his best, somewhat hierarchical polyamory, though some of Theron's issues snuck in here too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-24
Updated: 2019-11-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:35:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21539113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkShadeless/pseuds/DarkShadeless
Summary: Yon has to leave Odessen for a few days and Theron's stuck on nightshift. The obvious,logicalconclusion is that he should ask his other lover to look after their kid. What could go wrong?
Relationships: Arcann & Theron Shan, Arcann/Male Sith Warrior, Theron Shan/Male Sith Warrior
Series: Of pint-sized terrors [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552300
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	Babysitting

When his Commander asks him to watch over his student, his _child_ , Arcann is nearly overcome.

He had known his advances weren’t ill received. Yon’s smile, the light in his eyes when he looks at him these days, is testament enough of that but this… it’s a gift. A trust he didn’t think he was worthy of.

Their relationship has not been an easy one, not only because of their beginnings.

Their Commander is a near married man. For one so committed, he loves quite freely. Arcann has no idea how Agent Shan copes with his invasion. He himself has had to contend with more than one wild flare of jealousy when he saw someone win attention from the one who holds his heart that was just a little more than approving or fond, that put a slyness to the curve of Yon’s mouth, a wickedness that only comes when he truly enjoys a playful spar, verbal or otherwise.

Once Arcann had learned to read the signs of his favour it was rather unmistakeable.

Yon doesn’t restrict himself in his feelings and he does not hide them but he also never strays. Not without permission, at least. For reasons Arcann can’t name, Theron Shan is tolerant of his intrusion on that front. Nevertheless their own relationship is markedly tense, at times. They aren’t enamoured with each other, polite acquaintances but hardly friends.

Yes, he had little reason to expect to be invited past the boundaries Yon had drawn between his home-life and his lover. But here he is, trying to cajole a four-year-old twi’lek child into finishing her fruit-mash. It’s _dessert_. What child does not like dessert?

Or so he has been taught to expect. Arcann was initially sceptical of that theory. He isn’t sure he ever had dessert in his own childhood and any experiments on that front in recent years have proven sweets much too cloying for his taste. Yon _delights_ in serving him outlandish things he claims to be delicacies, almost as much as he delights in the faces Arcann inevitably makes. He enjoys it so well Arcann has yet to have the heart to deny him and generally ends up choking down whatever vile concoction he is served this time.

It’s fine. He has almost certainly eaten worse. The Huttish slime pastries last week were cutting it close, very _very_ close, but he survived. (And managed to shove about half of the helping into an innocent potted plant when Yon wasn’t looking. Last time Arcann saw it, it was wilting. He expects it's dead by now. It was still worth the laughter in Yon’s eyes. Every last taste bud he has sacrificed was well spent.)

It seems Fife is less convinced of the necessity to eat things she does not care for, however. “No.”

“Come now. It’s good for you.” Arcann ventures, tentatively. His dietary suggestions slide off her like water off a swamp-bird. Without a pause the tiny red twi’lek pouts, lekku curled close.

“ _No_. It’s yucky.” She glances at him from under her headdress, calculation plain and comical on her too-young face and so reminiscent of her parent it makes Arcann’s heart hurt strangely. “Master never makes me eat it.”

As cute as she is when she’s probably lying, Arcann dares to doubt that.

Helplessly, he does what he never did when he was still Emperor and warlord to boot. He starts to bargain. “How about half?”

Fife’s face lights up in unholy glee at this sign of weakness. “I shouldn’t have to eat _any_.”

“That’s… not how this works.”

“Does too.”

“Does not.”

“Does too!”

This might take a while.

* * *

Everything’s fine until it’s not.

Arcann fumbles his way through the afternoon, feeling about as clumsy as a bantha attempting to parent a kitten. Fife is so _small_. And so energetic. She bounces around like a rubber ball, leaving him sweating with anxiety. What if she gets hurt? It’s hardly as if he fully trust himself to _catch_ her.

Even with his much improved cybernetics he’s leery of his own strength, especially when handling something, someone, so fragile.

Perhaps that’s part of why Yon puts him so at ease. He is the one man in the galaxy Arcann has never managed to break, even when he was trying his hardest. (He did put cracks in him. He didn’t realize it when he did, not that he would have cared. Now… that’s a different matter. Many things are, these days.)

By skill or luck, or favour of the Gods, Fife does not get hurt and he manages to convince her to eat a quarter of her nutrient rich fruit-mash dessert. It takes him hours, but he does.

That’s about when things start to go wrong.

His charge puts her spoon down with all the prim displeasure of wronged royalty and Arcann can’t help but smile. That’s not the mistake he makes. No. “Bravely done. Your master will be very proud of you,” he says, warm.

Fife pauses. Her unquenchable energy had started to flag and he was thankful for it but now she looks- she looks- unease settles upon Arcann before she ever glances at him, cheer slowly draining away. “When is he back? Where is Papa?”

His heart gives a pang, for more reasons than one and none of them jealousy, thank the Gods. Wistfulness, maybe.

“Your Papa is working late.” Agent Shan would not be back until morning. He’s on the night shift rotation, this week. That’s half the reason Arcann was so readily drafted for babysitting duty. The other half of their pairing… well. The other half has been called off-planet to a warzone, where people need him, lightyears away from home.

Arcann doesn’t want to lie. He doesn’t know what to say. Yon said he would holo but battle leaves no room for guarantees and-

And his pause is too long. Fife’s face darkens and for a moment she looks like someone else again, someone that is _not_ either of her parents and never has been, never would have been- A stray current of undirected rage sizzles through the Force as tears gather in her eyes. “I want my _master_.”

* * *

‘ _I’m on silent comms but if anything goes wrong you can always call Theron_ ’ that’s what Yon left him when he was done fussing over his child and triple checking all of her snacks were accounted for. ‘ _Just call him, if you need help._ ’ Arcann had not quite sworn to himself then and there that he would not need help, or at least not this soon.

“Fife-“

“NO!”

He calls.

* * *

By the time Agent Shan manages to foist off his duties hastily and makes it to the living quarters he shares with their commander, their lodgings look as if a bomb has gone off. Arcann would be beyond appalled, if he had the capacity for that much feeling remaining in him.

He is _exhausted_ , emotionally more so than physically.

He may have softened a little over the years but his is a body trained to fight for days. The tantrum of one near-toddler is nothing on it. On his heart? That’s something else entirely, especially when Fife takes to screaming, fury and lightening cracking in her voice, and all he can see in her is his sister.

Only even when they were young he knew how to get through to Vaylin. She never hated _him_ , not until the end (and maybe not even then, though he will never know for sure).

Fife does, or at least she is convinced of it, convinced enough for it to ring true and more than upset enough to lash out at him clumsily with the power in her blood. That her small flame is but a bottled storm raging against a mountain means little. It cuts either way and Arcann is entirely helpless in the face of her raging emotions.

When Theron finally arrives she is crying so hard she has given herself the hiccups. Arcann is ashamed to be glad at that sign of her flagging endurance.

Shan takes one look at the tatters of his living room, the couch turned over and toys in pieces, his daughter inconsolable at the center of the chaos and their babysitter all but a _useless_ lump, and his face softens with sympathy and sadness. “Oh, baby.”

He sweeps his child into his arms without resistance and with an ease Arcann has to swallow a seed of bitterly shameful envy and failure over.

Fife’s lekku curl into the lapels of his jacket. She sniffles as he rocks her. “Papa…”

“I know, sweetheart. I know.”

She falls asleep like that, apparently as exhausted as Arcann himself if not more. Once she has and shows no sign of waking (or letting go of Shan’s attire) the agent ends his circling about the room and sinks onto the other half of the ruined couch.

He pitches his voice low. “That was an adventure, huh?”

That’s not what Arcann would call the end of this evening. He clenches his fists, struck mute.

He’s so _angry_ , mostly with himself. Gods, he feels about a wrong step away from a loss of temper of his own, tired and wound up, but he holds on to his composure by the skin of his teeth and the memory of his mother’s hand on his shoulder. _She_ would have known how to handle this.

Uncomfortable silence falls at his lack of answer.

Theron sighs. After a while he says, slowly, “You know, the first time I looked after her was a disaster. Yon’s meeting ran late. I tried to put her to bed and she realized he still wasn’t home and then… well. Complete meltdown. All bets were off.”

Arcann surveys the damage done to their living quarters and can’t help but huff. Shan chuckles.

“You think this is bad? She tore our kitchen to pieces. Chucked the sink at my head.”

He sighs again, deeper this time and more weary.

“That was about when I realized how far I was out of my league. She could have killed me.” That’s… but of course. Shan isn’t Force-sensitive. Unlike Arcann he doesn’t have the benefit of his own power to shroud and shield him. The implications, especially in the face of the aftermath of what happened today, are… terrible.

A shadow of something heavy crosses Theron’s face, ages him for the blink of an eye. “Never quite got why Jedi train kids, before that.”

They hold the silent vigil of adults who cannot quite fathom getting up and doing their job yet, Arcann curled in on himself a little, shoulders stooped under an invisible weight and Theron with his arms claimed by a youngling that would, most likely, not take well to waking up abandoned to her bed. A conundrum.

Arcann is still trying to find a way to ask if he should leave that won’t sound like he wants to shirk the clean-up, when Shan leans his shoulder against his own, a brief but solid weight. “Hey. It’s going to get easier. I promise.”

Slowly the knot in his throat starts to unravel, at least somewhat. “I’ll take your word for it.”

“Good. Let’s get this show on the road.”


End file.
